Coverage and planning policy for analogue radio broadcasting services

Background and scope

1.1 This document explains Ofcom's role and policy in planning and managing the spectrum on which local analogue sound broadcasting services (both commercial radio and community radio, but not including restricted services) operate and deliver their coverage. Ofcom is established under the statutory framework of the Communications Act 2003 ("the 2003 Act"), which confers on it a duty to secure a radio broadcasting environment which meets certain public policy objectives. In particular, Ofcom is required to secure the optimal use for wireless telegraphy of the electro-magnetic spectrum (section 3(2)(a) of the 2003 Act) and the availability throughout the United Kingdom of a wide range of radio services which (taken as a whole) are both of high quality and calculated to appeal to a variety of tastes and interests (section 3(2)(c) of the 2003 Act). This requires and enables Ofcom to plan and manage frequencies to form a virtual infrastructure' out of the finite and common resource that these frequencies represent.

1.2 The delivery of a good signal to listeners is at the heart of the sound broadcasting business. The extent of coverage and quality of that signal depends on:

• the resources made available by the regulator (Ofcom); and,
• the use made of those resources by the licensee.

1.3 This document describes the degrees of freedom available to a licensee to make the best use of its frequency resource, which is the core asset of its business. The three annexes are more technical in nature, and require a relevant amount of technical expertise to be accurately interpreted.

Objectives

1.4 Ofcom's two most important objectives in this area of its interest are to:

• achieve the best balance between (on the one hand) the effectiveness of coverage of an individual licence and (on the other), the scope to maintain the development of new services;
• protect existing services from interference (this is part of achieving effective coverage).

Principal responsibilities

There are three principal elements which characterise the Ofcomlicensee relationship:

1. The licensee has the responsibility to make the most efficient use of its frequency resources.
2. Ofcom's responsibility is to the radio sector as a whole, including opportunities for future development. Its ability to modify the distribution of resources to individual licences at the behest of just one user is very limited.
3. The burden of understanding this regulatory environment falls on the licensee, and the licence applicants before the licence is awarded. Likewise that burden also falls on the buyers and sellers of licences (or holdings therein), rather than Ofcom, when the ownership of licences changes.